10 STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 



plate the calmer activities of that other world with 

 which we are so mysteriously related. I hear you 

 exclaim, 



" The proper study of mankind is man ;" 



nor will I pretend, as some enthusiastic students 

 seem to think, that 



"The proper study of mankind is cells;" 



but agreeing with you, that man is the noblest 

 study, I would suggest that under the noblest there 

 are other problems which we must not neglect. 

 Man himself is imperfectly known, because the laws 

 of universal Life are imperfectly known. His life 

 forms but one grand illustration of Biology the 

 science of Life,* as he forms but the apex of the 

 animal world. 



Our studies here will be of Life, and chiefly of 

 those minuter or obscurer forms, which seldom at- 

 tract attention. In the air we breathe, in the water 

 we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is every 

 where. Nature lives: every pore is bursting with 

 Life ; every death is only a new birth, every grave 

 a cradle. And of this we know so little, think so 

 little ! Around us, above us, beneath us, that great 

 mystic drama of creation is being enacted, and we 

 will not even consent to be spectators! Unless 

 animals are obviously useful or obviously hurtful 



* The needful term Biology (from Bios, life, and logos, dis- 

 course) is now becoming generally adopted in England, as in Ger- 

 many. It embraces all the separate sciences of Botany, Zoology, 

 Comparative Anatomy, and Physiology. 



